Published: Sunday, February 3, 2013 at 12:45 a.m.

Last Modified: Sunday, February 3, 2013 at 12:45 a.m.

LAKELAND | At 95, Marguerite Graney was an independent, even stubborn woman who worked in her yard and washed her clothes by hand. But by her death at 98, she held no legal sway over her money, her house or even her body, which now lies in Socrum Cemetery despite directions in her will that she be cremated.

Some of her friends and neighbors say the frugal woman was unnecessarily institutionalized, her money drained and her last wishes ignored.

Christine Miller, who in August 2009 put Graney in a nursing home, said the elderly woman was suffering physically and mentally. Miller said she took charge of Graney's money, house and other assets to protect her from people who might take advantage of her.

She admits to deviating from the will's directions about burial. "I may have been remiss" in not carefully reading the will, Miller told The Ledger recently.

The court file for Graney's case shows charges and methods of operation that are like ones criticized by a judge in another Central Florida judicial circuit. In the 9th Circuit, a judge has banned a variety of practices, such as charging clients hundreds of dollars for work done before guardianships have been approved, guardians giving themselves significant raises without presenting justification and guardians charging their normal rates — as much as $75 an hour — for routine items like shopping.

(See accompanying story.)

Miller is a professional guardian working under court jurisdiction, and her job is to take care of people legally judged to be incompetent. She first heard of Graney on July 9, 2009, when Miller got a call from the branch manager of a Wachovia bank on U.S. 98 North.

According to Miller's documentation, Graney was confused and giving money to a woman identified in Miller's paperwork as Yvonne Hillsgrove, now 70.

Hillsgrove told The Ledger she was Graney's long-time neighbor and closest friend. They had been friends since 1971. She said she did Graney's hair once a week for 15 years because "Marge was tight with money. She wasn't going to pay a hairdresser."

The pair became "a lot closer" in the mid-1980s, after Graney's husband, Joe, died, Hillsgrove said. "After dinner, I'd bring over a six-pack, and sometimes Marge drank whiskey. She liked Canadian Mist."

Hillsgrove called it "ridiculous" that anyone suspected she was stealing Graney's money.

"If I wanted her money, I could have cleaned her out years ago," she said.

Hillsgrove was listed on all of Graney's accounts. She said that was in case Graney was sick and unable to go to the bank, "and that happened." Hillsgrove was also the beneficiary in Graney's will.

"If Marge's hand was too shaky, I'd write checks for her," she said. "I never took a dime. Not one dime."

Court documents show that although the bank manager and Miller suspected someone might be taking Graney's money, neither called police. Miller said she thinks police are too busy to investigate such a situation, and a bank spokeswoman would not divulge company policy for such instances.

TAKING CONTROL

Four days after the bank call, Miller visited Graney at the elderly woman's home at 8109 N. Campbell Road.

Ten days after that, on July 23, 2009, Miller filed court papers asking to be appointed temporary guardian in the case and requested that Graney be declared incompetent to take care of herself. Circuit Judge John Laurent granted those requests.

"She stated she still drives but does not recall where her car is," Miller stated in an emergency petition for guardianship, filed through Lakeland lawyer Stephen Martin, who worked as counsel on the case. "The Ward was married but does not know her late husband's name or where he is buried."

In the court petition asking to be appointed as Graney's guardian, Miller stated she "was asked by a social worker to initiate this guardianship." In Miller's documentation of her time, only the bank contact is mentioned. When asked about that disparity by The Ledger, Miller declined comment on it.

Working with Martin, Miller took control of Graney's legal and medical decisions, court records show. That required going through a legal process in which a panel evaluated whether Graney had become incompetent. A judge reviewed the findings and legal filings, then agreed.

Graney lost her rights, including the ability to decide where she would live, and footed the bill for Miller's work, first at $60 then at $75 an hour, and Martin's, at $350 an hour, court records show. In total, court records show Miller has billed $34,461 for her services. Lawyer fees, mainly billed by Martin, total another $12,323.

Miller and Martin both noted to The Ledger that the entire, amount, $46,784, paid from Graney's assets was reviewed by and approved by Laurent. The billing isn't finished; the last one filed goes only through August 2012.

As Graney's last years wound down until her death Dec. 14, Miller said every action she took as guardian was with her ward's best interests in mind.

Shortly after Miller began overseeing Graney, the 95-year-old was hospitalized Aug. 3, 2009, at Lakeland Regional Medical Center for a nasty leg rash, records show. Her neighbors said she got it from working in her yard, something Graney loved to do.

Within a month of meeting Miller, Graney was sent to Wedgewood Health Care Center.

People interviewed who knew Graney, including Miller, said she was independent and not always receptive to help.

Hillsgrove, Graney's long-time friend, said Graney was still fairly sharp when she was declared incompetent.

"She needed a doctor (for her rash), not a hospital," Hillsgrove said. "And she was still very capable of living in her own home."

Graney lived diagonally across the street from Hillsgrove and her family, including her son Robert Hillsgrove, who said he was close to Graney as he grew up.

"She was like a third grandmother to me," said the 44-year-old optometrist, who now lives in Brevard County.

Robert Hillsgrove said he saw Graney in May 2009, two months before Miller took over as guardian. "Marge looked fine," he said. "She was still taking care of herself. The house was in order."

Lee Burgner, 71, said she and Graney had been neighbors since 1976. She, too, said she thought Graney needed help, not a nursing home. Burgner she said she told Miller she would be happy to cook meals for the elderly woman but said Miller "wouldn't talk to me."

The Hillsgroves both said they struggled to find out where Graney was as she was transferred out of the hospital and from one facility to another.

Miller said Yvonne Hillsgrove was "not an interested party in the case" because she wasn't family. "I'm not here to help everyone. I'm here to be the best guardian for my ward," she said.

The Hillsgroves say they were the only family Graney had.

SELLING HER HOUSE

In mid 2010, Miller decided Graney's home needed to be sold, with the proceeds going into the guardianship account.

Bills filed with the court list Miller as charging almost six hours for showing a repairman two screens that needed work and the location of a bathroom leak and for inspecting the work. Miller charged $350 for her time, while the handyman's work was estimated at $150, including material and labor.

The house was sold in October 2010 through a Lakeland realty firm, Heineken & Company, for $53,000. Miller billed for 9.8 hours — $588 — for meetings with Bill Heineken about selling the home and with the man who bought it.

She said that many hours were needed because she paid Heineken a lower-than-usual fee and took on more of the sales work herself. Miller said Heineken's job was simply to steer potential buyers her way.

In February 2011, Miller filed her first bill in the case, it covered the first 18 months after she got involved. Records show she charged Graney's guardianship account $21,782. The bill included 348.7 hours at $60 each and more than $1,000 for driving nearly 2,300 miles at 44 cents a mile.

The clock started 13 days before Judge Laurent OK'd Miller's request for temporary guardianship, and the bill included $1,160 charged for that time before the court order.

Guardianship papers show Graney had four certificates of deposit at Wachovia, one CD at Mid Florida Credit Union and a checking account at SunTrust Bank. She had income from Social Security and a military pension bequeathed to her by her late husband.

Parts of Graney's court file are open to the public, and parts are closed. The closed portions include how much money Graney had when she was declared a ward of the court and how much money remains.

Records that are open show Miller billed mostly for banking; nursing home visits; shopping for Graney; and consulting with doctors, nursing homes and Martin.

Miller's next bill, OK'd by the court in August 2012, was for the period between Aug. 17, 2011, and Aug. 6, 2012. It totaled $12,539 for 161 hours and more than $480 for mileage. She was paid her hourly rate when she drove.

No court record of activity by Miller could be located for the time between Jan. 24, 2011, and Aug. 17, 2011 — a seven-month stretch. Miller wouldn't comment to The Ledger about the reason for that gap, whether she was paid for that time or whether she intends to bill for it in the future.

In the first of her invoices she charged $60 per hour to care for Graney. But on the second invoice she gave herself a 25 percent raise to $75 per hour. She told The Ledger she didn't ask Laurent before increasing her fee, but Laurent approved the invoices that included her higher rate.

Miller said she believed her work merited the higher rate and said she would like to be paid that rate in all her cases.

Early on in the guardianship, Miller took a short vacation, and a guardian from Polk City filled in. The substitute guardian visited Graney once, charging $140, which included $2.64 for six miles of driving.

Miller's lawyer, Martin, said it would be "incredibly na´ve" to think guardians should be matched geographically with wards to cut down on mileage and drive time charged. That's impractical and not how the system works, he said.

Miller said she practices "routing" when seeing wards, visiting three or four wards in Lakeland or another Polk County city and billing mileage in smaller increments instead of round trips.

But there's no evidence of that in the mileage statements Miller submitted to the court for payment.

WILL NOT FOLLOWED

After Graney died in Lakeland on Dec. 14 at age 98, Miller continued to make decisions because she was both Graney's personal and property guardian, and one action she took then was in conflict with her ward's will.

"I direct that my body be cremated and that my ashes be buried at Socrum Cemetery, alongside the grave of my deceased husband" Joe, Graney declared in her 1993 last will and testament.

It never happened. Instead, Graney was buried Dec. 18 next to her husband.

Miller said she found the will at the start of the guardianship in 2009 but said she didn't thoroughly read it and was unaware Graney said in it that she wished to be cremated. Miller said she was looking in the will for financial assets and missed part about cremation.

The cremation directive is in the third paragraph of the will.

But Miller adamantly defended the burial, saying it was her obligation to serve the wishes of the ward. Graney had no family, and Miller said she asked Graney repeatedly about her final arrangements and was told "multiple times" that Graney wanted to be buried next to her husband.

After her death, Graney's body was taken to Whidden-McLean Funeral Home in Bartow.

All of the people who knew her lived in North Lakeland, her friends said, including parishioners from St. Anthony Catholic Church in Lakeland.

Miller said Graney's body was taken to Bartow, as are almost all of her wards, because Whidden-McLean provides excellent service at a low price.

Many of the people who knew Graney couldn't have been aware of her death because no obituary was published, either in The Ledger, which offers brief death notices for free, or on memorial sites on the Internet.

Robert Hillsgrove found out about Graney's death from Miller and called the funeral home, where he was told about a graveside service at Socrum Cemetery north of Lakeland.

Fewer than 10 people came to service. Miller was out of town.

With no death notice published and no other notification to them, the Lakeland law firm of Carlton & Carlton, where Graney's will was on file, also didn't know she had died. The law firm learned of Graney's death from a reporter's phone call a month later.

Miller said she did ask the funeral home to get an obituary for Graney published. A spokesman for Whidden-McLean said there was "a communication problem."

"We apologize for our part in it," he said.

Burgner, Graney's neighbor, said only a few people showed up at the graveside service, and the service was pathetic.

"A dog should have a better funeral than what Marge got," Burgner said.

<p>LAKELAND | At 95, Marguerite Graney was an independent, even stubborn woman who worked in her yard and washed her clothes by hand. But by her death at 98, she held no legal sway over her money, her house or even her body, which now lies in Socrum Cemetery despite directions in her will that she be cremated.</p><p>Some of her friends and neighbors say the frugal woman was unnecessarily institutionalized, her money drained and her last wishes ignored.</p><p>Christine Miller, who in August 2009 put Graney in a nursing home, said the elderly woman was suffering physically and mentally. Miller said she took charge of Graney's money, house and other assets to protect her from people who might take advantage of her.</p><p>She admits to deviating from the will's directions about burial. "I may have been remiss" in not carefully reading the will, Miller told The Ledger recently.</p><p>The court file for Graney's case shows charges and methods of operation that are like ones criticized by a judge in another Central Florida judicial circuit. In the 9th Circuit, a judge has banned a variety of practices, such as charging clients hundreds of dollars for work done before guardianships have been approved, guardians giving themselves significant raises without presenting justification and guardians charging their normal rates — as much as $75 an hour — for routine items like shopping.</p><p>(See accompanying story.)</p><p>Miller is a professional guardian working under court jurisdiction, and her job is to take care of people legally judged to be incompetent. She first heard of Graney on July 9, 2009, when Miller got a call from the branch manager of a Wachovia bank on U.S. 98 North.</p><p>According to Miller's documentation, Graney was confused and giving money to a woman identified in Miller's paperwork as Yvonne Hillsgrove, now 70.</p><p>Hillsgrove told The Ledger she was Graney's long-time neighbor and closest friend. They had been friends since 1971. She said she did Graney's hair once a week for 15 years because "Marge was tight with money. She wasn't going to pay a hairdresser."</p><p>The pair became "a lot closer" in the mid-1980s, after Graney's husband, Joe, died, Hillsgrove said. "After dinner, I'd bring over a six-pack, and sometimes Marge drank whiskey. She liked Canadian Mist."</p><p>Hillsgrove called it "ridiculous" that anyone suspected she was stealing Graney's money.</p><p>"If I wanted her money, I could have cleaned her out years ago," she said.</p><p>Hillsgrove was listed on all of Graney's accounts. She said that was in case Graney was sick and unable to go to the bank, "and that happened." Hillsgrove was also the beneficiary in Graney's will.</p><p>"If Marge's hand was too shaky, I'd write checks for her," she said. "I never took a dime. Not one dime."</p><p>Court documents show that although the bank manager and Miller suspected someone might be taking Graney's money, neither called police. Miller said she thinks police are too busy to investigate such a situation, and a bank spokeswoman would not divulge company policy for such instances.</p><p> </p><p><b>TAKING CONTROL</b></p><p>Four days after the bank call, Miller visited Graney at the elderly woman's home at 8109 N. Campbell Road.</p><p>Ten days after that, on July 23, 2009, Miller filed court papers asking to be appointed temporary guardian in the case and requested that Graney be declared incompetent to take care of herself. Circuit Judge John Laurent granted those requests.</p><p>"She stated she still drives but does not recall where her car is," Miller stated in an emergency petition for guardianship, filed through Lakeland lawyer Stephen Martin, who worked as counsel on the case. "The Ward was married but does not know her late husband's name or where he is buried."</p><p>In the court petition asking to be appointed as Graney's guardian, Miller stated she "was asked by a social worker to initiate this guardianship." In Miller's documentation of her time, only the bank contact is mentioned. When asked about that disparity by The Ledger, Miller declined comment on it.</p><p>Working with Martin, Miller took control of Graney's legal and medical decisions, court records show. That required going through a legal process in which a panel evaluated whether Graney had become incompetent. A judge reviewed the findings and legal filings, then agreed.</p><p>Graney lost her rights, including the ability to decide where she would live, and footed the bill for Miller's work, first at $60 then at $75 an hour, and Martin's, at $350 an hour, court records show. In total, court records show Miller has billed $34,461 for her services. Lawyer fees, mainly billed by Martin, total another $12,323.</p><p>Miller and Martin both noted to The Ledger that the entire, amount, $46,784, paid from Graney's assets was reviewed by and approved by Laurent. The billing isn't finished; the last one filed goes only through August 2012.</p><p>As Graney's last years wound down until her death Dec. 14, Miller said every action she took as guardian was with her ward's best interests in mind.</p><p>Shortly after Miller began overseeing Graney, the 95-year-old was hospitalized Aug. 3, 2009, at Lakeland Regional Medical Center for a nasty leg rash, records show. Her neighbors said she got it from working in her yard, something Graney loved to do.</p><p>Within a month of meeting Miller, Graney was sent to Wedgewood Health Care Center.</p><p>People interviewed who knew Graney, including Miller, said she was independent and not always receptive to help.</p><p>Hillsgrove, Graney's long-time friend, said Graney was still fairly sharp when she was declared incompetent.</p><p>"She needed a doctor (for her rash), not a hospital," Hillsgrove said. "And she was still very capable of living in her own home."</p><p>Graney lived diagonally across the street from Hillsgrove and her family, including her son Robert Hillsgrove, who said he was close to Graney as he grew up.</p><p>"She was like a third grandmother to me," said the 44-year-old optometrist, who now lives in Brevard County.</p><p>Robert Hillsgrove said he saw Graney in May 2009, two months before Miller took over as guardian. "Marge looked fine," he said. "She was still taking care of herself. The house was in order."</p><p>Lee Burgner, 71, said she and Graney had been neighbors since 1976. She, too, said she thought Graney needed help, not a nursing home. Burgner she said she told Miller she would be happy to cook meals for the elderly woman but said Miller "wouldn't talk to me."</p><p>The Hillsgroves both said they struggled to find out where Graney was as she was transferred out of the hospital and from one facility to another.</p><p>Miller said Yvonne Hillsgrove was "not an interested party in the case" because she wasn't family. "I'm not here to help everyone. I'm here to be the best guardian for my ward," she said.</p><p>The Hillsgroves say they were the only family Graney had.</p><p> </p><p><b>SELLING HER HOUSE</b></p><p>In mid 2010, Miller decided Graney's home needed to be sold, with the proceeds going into the guardianship account.</p><p>Bills filed with the court list Miller as charging almost six hours for showing a repairman two screens that needed work and the location of a bathroom leak and for inspecting the work. Miller charged $350 for her time, while the handyman's work was estimated at $150, including material and labor.</p><p>The house was sold in October 2010 through a Lakeland realty firm, Heineken & Company, for $53,000. Miller billed for 9.8 hours — $588 — for meetings with Bill Heineken about selling the home and with the man who bought it.</p><p>She said that many hours were needed because she paid Heineken a lower-than-usual fee and took on more of the sales work herself. Miller said Heineken's job was simply to steer potential buyers her way.</p><p>In February 2011, Miller filed her first bill in the case, it covered the first 18 months after she got involved. Records show she charged Graney's guardianship account $21,782. The bill included 348.7 hours at $60 each and more than $1,000 for driving nearly 2,300 miles at 44 cents a mile.</p><p>The clock started 13 days before Judge Laurent OK'd Miller's request for temporary guardianship, and the bill included $1,160 charged for that time before the court order.</p><p>Guardianship papers show Graney had four certificates of deposit at Wachovia, one CD at Mid Florida Credit Union and a checking account at SunTrust Bank. She had income from Social Security and a military pension bequeathed to her by her late husband.</p><p>Parts of Graney's court file are open to the public, and parts are closed. The closed portions include how much money Graney had when she was declared a ward of the court and how much money remains.</p><p>Records that are open show Miller billed mostly for banking; nursing home visits; shopping for Graney; and consulting with doctors, nursing homes and Martin.</p><p>Miller's next bill, OK'd by the court in August 2012, was for the period between Aug. 17, 2011, and Aug. 6, 2012. It totaled $12,539 for 161 hours and more than $480 for mileage. She was paid her hourly rate when she drove.</p><p>No court record of activity by Miller could be located for the time between Jan. 24, 2011, and Aug. 17, 2011 — a seven-month stretch. Miller wouldn't comment to The Ledger about the reason for that gap, whether she was paid for that time or whether she intends to bill for it in the future.</p><p>In the first of her invoices she charged $60 per hour to care for Graney. But on the second invoice she gave herself a 25 percent raise to $75 per hour. She told The Ledger she didn't ask Laurent before increasing her fee, but Laurent approved the invoices that included her higher rate.</p><p>Miller said she believed her work merited the higher rate and said she would like to be paid that rate in all her cases.</p><p>Early on in the guardianship, Miller took a short vacation, and a guardian from Polk City filled in. The substitute guardian visited Graney once, charging $140, which included $2.64 for six miles of driving.</p><p>Miller's lawyer, Martin, said it would be "incredibly na´ve" to think guardians should be matched geographically with wards to cut down on mileage and drive time charged. That's impractical and not how the system works, he said.</p><p>Miller said she practices "routing" when seeing wards, visiting three or four wards in Lakeland or another Polk County city and billing mileage in smaller increments instead of round trips.</p><p>But there's no evidence of that in the mileage statements Miller submitted to the court for payment.</p><p> </p><p><b>WILL NOT FOLLOWED</b></p><p>After Graney died in Lakeland on Dec. 14 at age 98, Miller continued to make decisions because she was both Graney's personal and property guardian, and one action she took then was in conflict with her ward's will.</p><p>"I direct that my body be cremated and that my ashes be buried at Socrum Cemetery, alongside the grave of my deceased husband" Joe, Graney declared in her 1993 last will and testament.</p><p>It never happened. Instead, Graney was buried Dec. 18 next to her husband.</p><p>Miller said she found the will at the start of the guardianship in 2009 but said she didn't thoroughly read it and was unaware Graney said in it that she wished to be cremated. Miller said she was looking in the will for financial assets and missed part about cremation.</p><p>The cremation directive is in the third paragraph of the will.</p><p>But Miller adamantly defended the burial, saying it was her obligation to serve the wishes of the ward. Graney had no family, and Miller said she asked Graney repeatedly about her final arrangements and was told "multiple times" that Graney wanted to be buried next to her husband.</p><p>After her death, Graney's body was taken to Whidden-McLean Funeral Home in Bartow.</p><p>All of the people who knew her lived in North Lakeland, her friends said, including parishioners from St. Anthony Catholic Church in Lakeland.</p><p>Miller said Graney's body was taken to Bartow, as are almost all of her wards, because Whidden-McLean provides excellent service at a low price.</p><p>Many of the people who knew Graney couldn't have been aware of her death because no obituary was published, either in The Ledger, which offers brief death notices for free, or on memorial sites on the Internet.</p><p>Robert Hillsgrove found out about Graney's death from Miller and called the funeral home, where he was told about a graveside service at Socrum Cemetery north of Lakeland.</p><p>Fewer than 10 people came to service. Miller was out of town.</p><p>With no death notice published and no other notification to them, the Lakeland law firm of Carlton & Carlton, where Graney's will was on file, also didn't know she had died. The law firm learned of Graney's death from a reporter's phone call a month later.</p><p>Miller said she did ask the funeral home to get an obituary for Graney published. A spokesman for Whidden-McLean said there was "a communication problem."</p><p>"We apologize for our part in it," he said.</p><p>Burgner, Graney's neighbor, said only a few people showed up at the graveside service, and the service was pathetic.</p><p>"A dog should have a better funeral than what Marge got," Burgner said.</p><p>Burgner said she often thinks about Graney.</p><p>"I want to know where Marge's money went," she said. "There's something rotten about this."</p><p> </p><p>[ Rick Rousos can be reached at rick.rousos@theledger.com or 863-802-7509. ]</p>